


give me something to believe in

by owilde



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Attempt at Humor, F/F, F/M, Ghost Hunters, Haunted Houses, Horror, In a very mild sense, Ouija, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owilde/pseuds/owilde
Summary: “Clementine,” Violet sighed, her voice edging on desperation. “Comeon. There’s nothing here, I’m telling you. We’ve been sitting in this dusty living room for so long, I’m pretty sure I’m about to have an asthma attack.”Clementine shot her a look. “And I’m telling you, we’re going to catch a ghost on tape. It’s real, I know it is.”





	give me something to believe in

**Author's Note:**

> The Halloween season is upon us, time to get spooky. But not really. I don't write a lot of horror so this isn't really... scary. But still! Also, I wholeheartedly blame Buzzfeed Unsolved.
> 
> Title taken from Young the Giant's "Something to Believe In"

“Clementine,” Violet sighed, her voice edging on desperation. “Come _on_. There’s nothing here, I’m telling you. We’ve been sitting in this dusty living room for so long, I’m pretty sure I’m about to have an asthma attack.”

Clementine shot her a look. It was the one that meant she was willing to argue about this for however long it took. Violet hated that look. Well. Sort of. “And I’m telling you, we’re going to catch a ghost on tape. It’s real, I know it is.”

“Yeah, Vi,” Louis piped in from where he was lounging on the couch. He was too tall for it, his ankles protruded beyond the armrest. “Live a little. And if it’s too dusty, go outside.”

Violet rolled her eyes and tilted her head back, resting against the back of the armchair. She looked up at the practically rotting ceiling that was covered in spiderwebs and suspicious spots of what she hoped wasn’t anything toxic. The ceiling stared back.

It had been Louis’ idea, because most of their dumbest ideas started with Louis. He’d been reading up on local ghost stories late at night and had, by chance, stumbled upon an old article detailing the spirits that had taken residence over on the house on Wingfield Street. Allegedly, that was.

The article had been short and lacking, and originally written in the nineties before being archived on the site of the local news station. Louis had googled the writer, but he’d passed away in 2004 from heart complications. He’d emailed the news station for any potential footnotes or research stowed away relating to the article, but they’d found nothing.

And because Louis was by no means a quitter, and largely resembled a hunting dog who’d just caught a sniff of something sure to be delicious, his next stop was the town library. They kept old newspapers there, stored both digitally and in physical copies. It had been at this point that Louis had realized there were thousands of papers and only one him.

This was when Clem had been roped in.

Violet wouldn’t say Clementine was particularly inclined to be neither skeptical or a believer. But Louis was a very convincing speaker, and Clem liked him a lot, and besides, Halloween was approaching. Wouldn’t ghost hunting be _fun_? Wouldn’t it be exciting?

It wasn’t, and the existence of said ghosts was walking on such thin ice that a gentle gust of wind could crack it. The newspapers had produced, in total, very little information which ultimately amounted to not much at all. There had been a family living in Wingfield 5, in the early seventies. There had been a robbery gone wrong, resulting in the family being killed.

And now theirs spirits haunted the place. _Allegedly_.

“This is boring,” Violet tried again, shifting so that she was laying sideways on the plush chair with her feet hanging out. Her fingers brushed the dirty floor. “Can we at least _do_ something? Something that isn’t, you know, sitting around in complete silence?”

“I thought that was your favorite hobby?” Louis asked, grinning at her.

Violet flipped him off as Clementine smiled to herself, tapping away at her phone. “We could play with the Ouija board Lou brought,” she suggested lightly. Her tone slipped into teasing as she continued, “Unless Vi’s too scared.”

Violet scowled at her. “I’m not fucking scared,” she protested. “I just think it’s dumb. This whole thing is dumb. I could be at home, pretending I’m a pirate.”

“What’s the point of playing Black Flag if you can’t even woo a pirate?” Louis asked. “Honestly, let me romance the NPCs already.”

“As if you had the skills to romance a fucking pirate,” Violet said. “They’d murder you before you even got to base one.”

Louis raised a brow at her. “I managed to romance Clem,” he pointed out. “That’s saying something.”

Violet snorted. “Yeah? So did I. What’s that supposed to proof?”

“Guys,” Clem interjected, in her kind but forceful tone. “If we could stop talking about me like I’m a character in a game? And also like I’m not even present?”

Violet saw Louis’ expression turn sheepish as he gave her a bashful smile. “Sorry, Clem. We just mean, you’re very smart and beautiful, and we’re, uh…”

“We’re the guys who started a GSA club and were the only two members for the first six months,” Violet said. “That’s what we are.”

They’d gotten two more members since – Clementine, and someone who’d joined them out of pity to keep the club going. Louis was in a constant battle with Marlon to get him to join, but apparently, he was more concerned with his image than helping out his friends.

Which was fine. Violet wasn’t petty about it – she knew some people were wound pretty tight over their scholarships and such. She understood. That didn’t mean she didn’t side-eye Marlon every chance she got, or that she didn’t send Minnie and Sophie texts every other day, kindly asking them to join, pretty please.

(Yeah, fine, maybe not so kindly, if she was being honest, but _still_. They could’ve joined.)

“Exactly,” Louis said. “We’re _those_ guys. So, really, if we talk about you like your a romanceable choice in Assassin’s Creed–”

“Still weird,” Clementine said, eyes on her phone screen. She was biting her lower lip in concentration – an adorable habit Violet had picked up on very early into their friendship, and which had never ceased being distracting as all hell.

Violet eyed Clem as she scrolled through something, her eyes scanning her screen at a rapid speed. “What’s that?”

“Hmm?”

“What are you reading?”

“Oh.” Clementine looked up at her, one corner of her mouth pulling into a smile. It did unfair things to Violet. “Just some stuff about the history of EVPs. I think we should try to get a recording upstairs, that’s where the killings took place, right, Lou?”

Louis stretched his limbs and yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sure,” he said, and closed his eyes, sagging against the couch like a sack of flours. “Upstairs. Blood and gore.”

Violet gave him a disapproving look. “It’s barely ten o’clock,” she said. “How are you tired?”

Louis cracked one eye open and stared at her, lips drawn into an unamused line. “ _Some_ of us live in the outskirts,” he said dryly. “Some of us were being mean yesterday and didn’t have the understanding of their sweet girlfriend, who owns a car.”

“Right,” Violet said, and felt an involuntary smirk spread on her face. “It really is a shame. We got iced coffee before school, you know. Slept until seven-thirty, too.”

Louis groaned and closed his eyes again, turning to his side and pulling his knees towards his chest. “Seven-thirty,” he echoed sadly. “I got up an hour before that. Do you want to know at what time I fell asleep? You don’t, because the mere _thought_ will put you to sleep straight away.”

“Four,” Violet said. “I went to sleep at four.”

“Around three,” Clementine volunteered. “I had to write up the essay that was due today.”

Violet didn’t say that she’d just been too annoyed with herself to sleep, tossing and turning in bed, eyes glued on the clock on her wall like she could will it to turn back a few hours to when she _had_ been tired, but adamantly had refused to go to sleep because it had been too _early_.

Louis let out a laugh that sounded half bitter, half desperate. “Ten past five,” he said, sounding miserable. “That’s, what… not even two hours? So yeah, Vi, I’m tired. Sue me.”

“One day I will,” Violet said cheerily. “I don’t what for, but I’ll think of something.”

Clementine sprung to her feet abruptly, setting a cloud of dust in the air that made Violet cough and sneeze. “Guys,” she said, putting her phone away. “We should actually use the board.”

Violet sighed, sitting up straight with her feet on the ground. She leaned forward and felt her back crack a little. No one winced at the sound anymore. “The Ouija thing? Isn’t it complete bullshit?”

“No,” Clementine said emphatically, then amended, “I mean, _maybe_. But let’s test it, and put the recorder on at the same time. Even if the board doesn’t give us anything, they might answer with words.”

“Brilliant,” Louis murmured. “Can I do it from here?”

Clementine shot Violet a look that seemed to say, _do something_ , before walking off towards the entrance hall where their bags were. Violet watched her adjust her cap, before prying her eyes away and towards Louis, who’d begun snoring lightly.

She stood up and tip-toed over to the couch as quietly as she could. She crouched in front of Louis, and after a pause of making sure he’d really dozed off, whispered, “Homecoming.”

He startled awake with a slight yelp, accidentally knocking Violet to the floor. She sat laughing as Louis looked at her in horror. “Don’t you dare,” he warned her. “We said we wouldn’t talk about it, Vi.”

“Nah,” Violet said, holding back another fit of laughter. “You said not to talk about it, and I said, ‘it’s funny you think I’ll listen.’”

Louis sat up and buried his head in his hands. “How was I supposed to know,” he mumbled, barely decipherable, “that the PA system was on?”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about it before broadcasting your coming out to the entire gym,” Violet said, amused.

Louis gave an eloquent, “Ugh.”

“Come on,” Violet said, pushing herself up from the floor. She looked at her dust-covered palms with disgust. “Everyone thought your puns were kind of funny.”

“I don’t know,” Clem piped in, walking back to the room with the Ouija board secured against her chest with one arm, the other one holding a red thermostat bottle. “I thought the one about pandemics was a little lame.”

Louis lifted his head up, frowning. “I’m sorry my sexuality doesn’t lend itself to the hilarious puns that bisexuality does,” he said.

“Try being a lesbian,” Violet said.

Clementine dropped the board unceremoniously on the floor. It gave off a quiet _thud_ , and set off more dust. Violet shielded her nose with her sleeve and stepped aside as Clementine handed the thermostat over to Louis, who looked at it like it was his newborn child.

“Coffee?” He asked hopefully, eyes drifting over to Clementine.

“Yup,” Clementine said. “Nothing like a jolt of caffeine to awaken an exhausted high school student.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Louis agreed, already pouring a cup for himself.

Violet eyed the Ouija board on the floor and sighed. It looked like the ones you bought at a convenience store around Halloween, to play with at a house party with a bunch of drunken teenagers.

They weren’t at a house party, which was all the better, nor were they drunk, which was preferable, too. But it just kind of made the entire situation more sad. Violet realized very acutely that it was a Friday night and she was hanging around an old abandoned house, with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s boyfriend, trying to contact a fucking family of ghosts.

“So,” she said, “are we actually doing this, then?”

Louis gulped down a cup of hot coffee at a rate that by all means should’ve burned his tongue, and slid from the couch to the floor, placing the thermostat next to him. “Hell yeah, we are,” he said. “Vi, sit down. Clem, do we have candles?”

Clem disappeared back into the entrance hall. Violet, resigned to her fate, sunk to the floor and automatically dug up her lighter from her vest pocket.

“Pros of quitting smoking,” Louis said as he noticed what she was doing. “You can’t enable our paranormal habits.”

“You’d just get matches,” Violet mumbled as Clementine returned with two white candles. She sat down with Violet to her left and Louis to her right and placed the candles around to give off as much light as possible.

“Lighter?” Clementine asked, extending her hand towards Violet with her palm facing upwards.

Violet dropped the orange zippo down and pulled her knees up, holding a staring contest with the board. She frowned.

“I read an article that said you’re not supposed to do this if you’re depressed,” she pointed out.

Louis and Clementine both snapped to look at her with wary eyes.

“Really?” Clementine asked, her hand hovering near the unlit candle. “I didn’t know that. Should we–”

Something furled within Violet’s chest, a familiar feeling of annoyance directed at herself. She was making things difficult again, like she always did. “No,” she cut in. “It’s fine, honestly. It’s all fake anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“Are you sure?” Louis asked. “’Cause we don’t have to do this.”

The annoyance became more pronounced, cutting down to her bone. “It’s fine,” she repeated. “Let’s just do this so we can all go home at some point tonight.”

Clem shot her one final fleeting look. “Okay,” she agreed. “Any other rules we should be aware of?”

Violet didn’t want to admit to having read a bunch of articles in class the day before, because she adamantly didn’t believe in this kind of stuff. It didn’t mean she couldn’t be careful, though. So, maybe she’d become a tiny bit paranoid. It didn’t mean shit.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t ask it when you’re gonna die? Don’t be rude?”

“Seems manageable,” Louis said. “I’ll probably remember that.”

Clementine had finished lighting the candles. Violet took her lighter back, and said under her breath, “I swear to god if we die because you forgot the _two_ things we can’t do…”

The late September air made the house feel freezing cold. Violet sniffled, mentally preparing herself for the inevitable cold she was going to catch. On Monday, she could miss school. Tuesday was on thin ice. Wednesday wouldn’t be a problem.

The candles didn’t emanate nearly enough warmth. Violet moved her hands closer to the flames regardless, filled with a stubborn kind of determination to get something out of this dumb experience. She was tempted to reach out and take Clementine’s hand, but as the thought slipped into her mind, Clementine placed her fingers on the planchette.

Violet’s lips twitched downwards. “Do we all do that?”

“Yeah,” Louis said, already reaching out. “But we have to pick a leader. Someone who asks the question.”

“Clem,” Violet offered.

“Yup,” Louis agreed easily.

“Hey,” Clementine argued, then said, “Yeah, okay.”

Violet didn’t really want to touch the planchette. She didn’t really want to do any of this. “So if only Clem gets to talk, and we’re asking questions… who’s writing them down?”

She watched Clementine and Louis have a conversation entirely with their eyes. They did that, sometimes – stared at each other and conversed purely on instinct and micro expressions only they knew how to read correctly.

“You could write,” Louis eventually said, breaking the eye contact. “On your phone, if you don’t have pen and paper.”

“Why the fuck would I have pen and paper,” Violet said, not really asking. She pulled her phone out and opened the notepad, watching the cursor blink against the blank space. “Do we agree on questions before we start, or do we just… trust Clem?”

Another wordless conversation. This time, Clem answered. “Let’s keep it spontaneous,” she said, then her eyes widened. “Oh, someone needs to put the EVP recorder on. So that we can catch the voices.”

Violet rolled her eyes, but reached for the stupid thing anyway, pressing the button on. A light switched on, indicating it was rolling. “Done,” she said. “Now can we _please_ get on with it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clementine said. She rolled her shoulders; her eyes got a certain look in them, one that Violet recognized as her standing up to a challenge. She cleared her throat. “Okay, um. Hello… spirits. Or anyone. We’re here to speak with you, if that’s okay. My name’s Clementine.”

“Louis.”

“Violet.”

“We’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s alright?”

Violet watched as the planchette remained in its place, rooted above the ‘G’. She felt an odd tingle of anticipation in her stomach, one that she didn’t know how to interpret. She wasn’t too excited to _communicate with the spirits,_ or whatever, but she kind of… wanted for something to happen.

It was dumb. It was ridiculous. It was…

Violet watched as the planchette moved over to YES. She gulped, and saw Clementine and Louis glance at each other nervously. The air felt electric all of a sudden, like an undercurrent.

“Thank you,” Clementine said slowly. “Who am I talking to, right now?”

They all watched the planchette slide slowly across the board, spelling out M-A-T-T-H-E-W. Violet blinked rapidly, then at Louis’ pointed look, she hurried to write the question and answer down on her phone. Her legs were getting static, but she didn’t want to move.

Clementine nodded, like the name answered everything. “Matthew Hill, father of Loren, husband of Laura?”

Another YES. Violet wrote this down too, trying to come up with a shorthand to ease the task. She ended up writing _“creepy dad confirmed.'_

In the back of her mind, she was fighting with herself to convince herself that this was all Louis playing a prank on them. He knew the case as well as anyone – he would’ve known the name of the father, and he’d know everything else, too. But Violet didn’t know if Louis would go this far just to spook her and Clem.

“Hi, Matthew,” Clementine said, like this was a normal conversation she was having, and not one she was having with a potential ghost. “Nice to meet you. Sorry that we kind of took over your house – don’t worry, we’ll leave soon. So–”

Before she could ask her next question, the planchette moved to spell out, “It’s alright.”

Clementine stared at it in slight wonder. Violet didn’t understand her girlfriend, sometimes. “Thank you,” she said, and smiled softly. “So, I was… well, I was just wondering. The night that you all… died. Back in -74. Do you remember that night?”

The planchette moved to YES.

Violet felt distinctively uncomfortable. She didn’t want to do this, she didn’t want to know how Matthew and Laura and whoever the fuck had died. It said it right there in the few articles that existed – a robbery gone wrong, no culprit ever caught. It had been a cold case for longer than they’d been alive.

“And do you know who broke into your apartment that night?” Clementine pushed on. One of the candles flickered, but stayed lit. Violet eyed it with a frown, shifting slightly to get the blood in her legs flowing again.

For a moment, there was no movement. The silence stretched on long enough for Violet to open her mouth to tell them to quit it already, when the planchette started drifting across the board once more.

She wrote the letters down as they appeared, and then stared at her screen, feeling colder than before. _It was Jeremiah_.

Violet showed the screen to Louis and Clementine, who looked as out of odds as she felt. Clementine seemed to contemplate something in her mind, her eyes locked on the planchette that was now resting on ‘H’. Then she continued talking, sounding far too calm for it to be real.

“Who’s Jeremiah?”

The planchette wrote out, slower than before, “Son.”

Louis shot Clementine a warning look. The queasy feeling in Violet’s stomach intensified. Her skin felt prickly and cold all over. The whole atmosphere seemed wrong, somehow, like they were going against the current.

“Your son?” Clementine asked. "We didn't know you had a son. What happened to him? What did he do?"

The planchette didn’t move for a while. Then, it spelled out, “Here.”

Violet couldn’t keep quiet anymore. She felt sickly and uncomfortable, and she wanted to go home. “Who’s here?”

Clementine frowned at her, but before she could say anything, the planchette moved. Now, it spelled out, “It’s Jeremiah.”

“Who’s Jeremiah?” Louis demanded.

Another long pause. The candles flickered again, before settling into an eerie stillness, like they were frozen in time. Violet’s heart was climbing up her throat, her stomach was coiling. They never should’ve come here in the first place.

The planchette moved again. Violet’s screen dimmed and shut down, and she realized she hadn’t been writing any of this down. She pocketed her phone, and looked up just in time to see that the planchette was writing out, “Me.”

There was a moment of pure silence. Then the board started counting down from 9 to 1, moving slowly like it was deliberately playing with them.

“Shut it down,” Violet said. “Shut it down, now!”

“I know,” Clementine replied, her voice tense. “How do I–”

“Goodbye,” Louis hurried to say, and forcefully moved the planchette over to said word. As soon as it was there, he lifted it up from the board, holding it inside his curled fist. Violet managed to count to ten in her head before the candles returned to normal, and the unnatural coldness slipped away.

None of them said anything for a while. Then, Violet took the board and folded it, pushing it back into its box. Louis put the planchette into a small pouch and dropped it into the box with the board. Slowly, they collected all their belongings, and slipped out of the house wordlessly.

They made it about a hundred feet from the house before they spoke again.

“That was…” Louis started. He hesitated. “Intense.”

Violet huffed, and watched her breath turn to mist in the cold night air. “Yeah, no shit. Intense doesn’t even begin to fucking cover that, Lou.” She turned to look at Clementine, who was staring at the road ahead of them with a solemn expression. “You okay, Clem?”

She didn’t reply for a few seconds. Then she blinked, as if shaking herself from a daze, and turned to look at Violet with a small smile. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “I think we managed to stop whatever was trying to get out through the board.”

“So, we agree?” Louis asked. “That was actually a spirit. Or something like that, at least.”

Violet hated admitting she was wrong, and she especially hated admitting it to Louis. But she couldn’t deny that had been… not entirely natural. That maybe there had been something, or someone, there.

“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

They all stopped and turned back towards the house. From distance, it didn’t look like anything special. Violet didn’t think anything had changed from before, externally, but somehow it felt different, regardless. She bristled slightly.

A thought slipped into her mind, and she let out a sigh. “We forgot the EVP recorder there,” she said, nodding towards the house.

No one volunteered to go back for it. Clementine turned her back to the house, and started walking again. “I think we’ll live without it,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d even want to know what it was recording.”

“Agreed,” Louis said, and took a few longer steps to catch up with her.

Violet gave the house one last fleeting glance, before turning away as well. She pushed her hands into her pockets. Somehow, for the entire way back home, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was walking right behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> My gaming tumblr's @ rachelcmber!


End file.
